According to Accenture the CIOs believe more and more in Enterprise Mobility

May 8, 2013

According to an Accenture study, the majority of CIOs (79%) believe that mobility will be one of the sectors that will produce significant profits in the future, which is why many of them will invest between 31 and 40% of their budget (compared to 19 % declared by CIOs last year) in these technologies. The 2013 CIO Accenture survey about mobility , realized on more than 400 CIOs from around the world, shows that next year the mobile will be the top priority for more than a third of CIOs (34%), while 42% of them include it among the top 5 priorities. In addition, 73% (compared to 67% last year) believe that this sector will revolutionize the manner we do business, the same or more than Internet did in the late nineties.

About mobile technology, according to 43% of respondents, the first thing we have to do is to improve customer service through access, acquisition and immediate processing of the data, followed by the need to engage customers through devices furniture (36%), in particular through the operations of transaction (34%). 29% of respondents also stated that it intends to design, develop and / or distribute devices connected to the web, in order to support B2B applications.

At the global level China (50%), Italy (47%) and Brazil (37%) act as pioneers in the implementation of advanced mobility strategies. Although there are significant differences in terms of the progress made in the development of strategies, half of the companies surveyed (50%) claimed to have identified for the coming year a number of initiatives that are a priority for the development of mobile applications, up compared with that recorded last year (41%). Almost all companies have stated that their strategies target is the adoption of smartphones (85%) and tablets (78%), increasingly used by companies as work tools.

The study also found that the mobile device management (27%), collaboration (25%) and knowledge sharing (23%) are the three main features of an advanced strategy for the adoption of the mobile. When Accenture asked what were their two top priorities, the members of the research in China (53%), Italy (53%) and India (50%) indicated the mobility as one of the two most important areas. In the UK (67%), Japan (57%) and France (52%) the mobility has been listed among the top five priorities in the field of IT.

The management of human resources, security, interoperability and the phenomenon of BYOD (bring your own device) are the key challenges.

One of the main difficulties to be overcome is made up of human resource management: 52% of the companies tend to invest in training to upgrade the existing staff on mobile strategies, while 37% will assume full-time outside resources with specific expertise in applications Mobile, resulting in a strong demand for talent in this market segment. The research also revealed an increase in projects managed internally (76% in 2013, compared to 63% in 2012) to encourage the development of mobile applications.

Security continues to be an obstacle, and interoperability has become a prominent issue: since the existing systems were not designed for mobile, must be transformed so that they can still be used. The survey revealed that security (45%), budget constraints (41%) and the lack of interoperability with existing systems (31%) still represent the main obstacles to mobility.

Another area related to the use of the mobile is that of the 'bring your own device', a practice increasingly common that companies no longer provide to employees and the computer and the mobile phone standard, but invite them to use directly their access to information resources for work. However, more than half of the companies surveyed (59%) offers limited support to their employees, while only a quarter of them (28%) provides all the necessary support.

"With regard to the BYOD phenomenon, we believe that CIOs must be able to manage the risks and opportunities associated with the introduction of personal mobile devices in the workplace," said Michael Brown. "They should also understand the need to focus more on people and skills. Companies have almost doubled (40% in 2013, compared to 27% in 2012) who plan to use consultants to develop and fine-tune their strategies, and this shows that the use of mobile is growing faster the responsiveness of the market in terms of supply of qualified staff.